Post by rainman on Sept 5, 2007 6:17:37 GMT -5
Let’s revisit WVU-MU back in 1915
By Bob Hertzel
For the Times West Virginian
MORGANTOWN— It’s been a long time since West Virginia University’s football team visited Huntington to play Marshall’s Thundering Herd, but it only goes to show that the adage which proclaims “the more things change, the more they stay the same” is correct.
We go back to 1915, Nov. 6, to be precise.
The world was being savaged by war. Not much different than today.
Typhoid Mary had infected 25 people in New York’s P.J. Sloan Hospital. We just went through our own “Typhoid Mary” scare of sorts when Drew Speaker, a personal injury lawyer from Atlanta, flew to Europe and back despite having what was thought to be a drug-resistant form of tuberculosis.
Pancho Villa was wrecking havoc in Mexico, not unlike Osama Bin Laden is doing from his mountainous hideaway.
Secretary of State William Jennings Bryant resigned after coming under fire for his handling of the German sinking of the ship Lusitania. Does anyone remember the name Donald Rumsfield?
What would have been a category 5 hurricane made landfall in Galveston, Texas, and killed 275 people. Does Katrina come to mind?
Cornell was the national football champion with a 9-0-0 record.
OK, some things change.
Even the WVU-Marshall rivalry has changed.
If anything, it was more intense then.
Oh, the football gods have seen to it that the Mountaineers remain huge favorites over the Herd and are expected to have their way in this Saturday’s 11:10 a.m. game as the nation’s No. 3 team.
One would hope it isn’t quite so lopsided as the 92-6 pounding the Mountaineers put on Marshall that December day in 1915, but now you know why the series came to a screeching halt and why WVU wasn’t ever brought back to Marshall.
That would have been like inviting Gen. Sherman back to Atlanta.
The game, however, is best remembered not for the way WVU ran up and down the field, but instead for the way Marshall snookered the legendary Mountaineer coach Sol Metzger and forced football to put a new rule in its rulebook.
First, we bring you a little history. In 1912 and 1913 WVU had been beaten by in-state opponent West Virginia Wesleyan, the second game by a 21-0 score in Fairmont, and the alumni was up in arms about such an indignity.
They pushed to have a new coach with a national reputation hired.
Metzger filled that bill. Metzger had coached Penn to a national championship before coming to the Mountaineers for his brief two-year stay and would coach at Washington & Jefferson — then a power — and South Carolina before retiring.
He was sure WVU would lay a whipping on poor Marshall, which was 0-5 at the time and had been outscored 127-6 and shut out four times. So sure, in fact, he made the bold statement that he would eat his hat if Marshall so much as scored in the game.
Even without the Internet, the boast got back to the Marshall campus. The Herd’s coach, Boyd “Fox” Campbell, decided he needed to do something extreme to see it didn’t happen.
And, no, he didn’t send anyone to Morgantown to spy on WVU, but his plan was just as sinister, as you shall see.
About 1,600 fans were at the game, about the number you would expect for an execution.
Like this year’s WVU team with Patrick White, the Mountaineers then had a pretty fair quarterback running the show by the name of Ira Errett Rodgers, who would go on to become a consensus All-American and a member of the College Football Hall of Fame.
He also was the only man to captain the football, basketball and baseball teams in the same year — 1919.
With Rodgers pulling the trigger, WVU built a 26-0 lead in the first quarter, and Chambers realized he needed to do something drastic. So, in this era of the leather helmet and not far removed from the flying wedge, he began having quarterback Brad Workman pass the ball.
The forward pass had been invented in 1906 and was not readily accepted yet in the game. So it was that it worked briefly as Marshall approached WVU’s goal line. But the drive stalled, and the Herd was still knocking on the door at fourth down.
This was when Campbell lived up his nickname of “Fox.”
According to research done by the WVU sports information office, “as Workman dropped back to pass, running back Dayton Carter and tackle Okey Taylor headed to the end zone together. Taylor then propped Carter up on his shoulders so he could receive Workman’s pass for the score.”
As they say today, the crowd went wild.
And, as things really do seldom change, the officials went into a huddle as Metzger threw a fit and everything but a red flag on the field signaling for an instant replay. We do not know how long it took to make a decision, or if the referee said, “Upon further review, the play stands as called on the field.”
But that was the ultimate result. The officials could find no rule to keep one player from climbing on another’s shoulders to catch a pass. The forward pass was in such infancy that even the ineligible-receiver-downfield rule probably didn’t exist at the time.
The play came to be known as “The Tower Play,” and Marshall would use it one more time during the season to avoid a shutout during an 18-7 loss to Ohio.
After the game, Metzger appealed to Yale coach Walter Camp, who ran the rules in those days, and Camp ruled that the touchdown would stand but the play would no longer be legal.
As it was, it did light a fire under the Mountaineers, who went on to score 52 unanswered points in the second half and then won their next three games by 19-0, 28-0 and 30-0 over, yes, Wesleyan.
Metzger had completed his job and moved on.
Whether he took his hat with him or ate it that December day in Huntington no one remembers.
By Bob Hertzel
For the Times West Virginian
MORGANTOWN— It’s been a long time since West Virginia University’s football team visited Huntington to play Marshall’s Thundering Herd, but it only goes to show that the adage which proclaims “the more things change, the more they stay the same” is correct.
We go back to 1915, Nov. 6, to be precise.
The world was being savaged by war. Not much different than today.
Typhoid Mary had infected 25 people in New York’s P.J. Sloan Hospital. We just went through our own “Typhoid Mary” scare of sorts when Drew Speaker, a personal injury lawyer from Atlanta, flew to Europe and back despite having what was thought to be a drug-resistant form of tuberculosis.
Pancho Villa was wrecking havoc in Mexico, not unlike Osama Bin Laden is doing from his mountainous hideaway.
Secretary of State William Jennings Bryant resigned after coming under fire for his handling of the German sinking of the ship Lusitania. Does anyone remember the name Donald Rumsfield?
What would have been a category 5 hurricane made landfall in Galveston, Texas, and killed 275 people. Does Katrina come to mind?
Cornell was the national football champion with a 9-0-0 record.
OK, some things change.
Even the WVU-Marshall rivalry has changed.
If anything, it was more intense then.
Oh, the football gods have seen to it that the Mountaineers remain huge favorites over the Herd and are expected to have their way in this Saturday’s 11:10 a.m. game as the nation’s No. 3 team.
One would hope it isn’t quite so lopsided as the 92-6 pounding the Mountaineers put on Marshall that December day in 1915, but now you know why the series came to a screeching halt and why WVU wasn’t ever brought back to Marshall.
That would have been like inviting Gen. Sherman back to Atlanta.
The game, however, is best remembered not for the way WVU ran up and down the field, but instead for the way Marshall snookered the legendary Mountaineer coach Sol Metzger and forced football to put a new rule in its rulebook.
First, we bring you a little history. In 1912 and 1913 WVU had been beaten by in-state opponent West Virginia Wesleyan, the second game by a 21-0 score in Fairmont, and the alumni was up in arms about such an indignity.
They pushed to have a new coach with a national reputation hired.
Metzger filled that bill. Metzger had coached Penn to a national championship before coming to the Mountaineers for his brief two-year stay and would coach at Washington & Jefferson — then a power — and South Carolina before retiring.
He was sure WVU would lay a whipping on poor Marshall, which was 0-5 at the time and had been outscored 127-6 and shut out four times. So sure, in fact, he made the bold statement that he would eat his hat if Marshall so much as scored in the game.
Even without the Internet, the boast got back to the Marshall campus. The Herd’s coach, Boyd “Fox” Campbell, decided he needed to do something extreme to see it didn’t happen.
And, no, he didn’t send anyone to Morgantown to spy on WVU, but his plan was just as sinister, as you shall see.
About 1,600 fans were at the game, about the number you would expect for an execution.
Like this year’s WVU team with Patrick White, the Mountaineers then had a pretty fair quarterback running the show by the name of Ira Errett Rodgers, who would go on to become a consensus All-American and a member of the College Football Hall of Fame.
He also was the only man to captain the football, basketball and baseball teams in the same year — 1919.
With Rodgers pulling the trigger, WVU built a 26-0 lead in the first quarter, and Chambers realized he needed to do something drastic. So, in this era of the leather helmet and not far removed from the flying wedge, he began having quarterback Brad Workman pass the ball.
The forward pass had been invented in 1906 and was not readily accepted yet in the game. So it was that it worked briefly as Marshall approached WVU’s goal line. But the drive stalled, and the Herd was still knocking on the door at fourth down.
This was when Campbell lived up his nickname of “Fox.”
According to research done by the WVU sports information office, “as Workman dropped back to pass, running back Dayton Carter and tackle Okey Taylor headed to the end zone together. Taylor then propped Carter up on his shoulders so he could receive Workman’s pass for the score.”
As they say today, the crowd went wild.
And, as things really do seldom change, the officials went into a huddle as Metzger threw a fit and everything but a red flag on the field signaling for an instant replay. We do not know how long it took to make a decision, or if the referee said, “Upon further review, the play stands as called on the field.”
But that was the ultimate result. The officials could find no rule to keep one player from climbing on another’s shoulders to catch a pass. The forward pass was in such infancy that even the ineligible-receiver-downfield rule probably didn’t exist at the time.
The play came to be known as “The Tower Play,” and Marshall would use it one more time during the season to avoid a shutout during an 18-7 loss to Ohio.
After the game, Metzger appealed to Yale coach Walter Camp, who ran the rules in those days, and Camp ruled that the touchdown would stand but the play would no longer be legal.
As it was, it did light a fire under the Mountaineers, who went on to score 52 unanswered points in the second half and then won their next three games by 19-0, 28-0 and 30-0 over, yes, Wesleyan.
Metzger had completed his job and moved on.
Whether he took his hat with him or ate it that December day in Huntington no one remembers.
